


The Main Detractor

by runandgo



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Deus Ex Machina, M/M, Mission Fic, No Spoilers, Pining, Q gets kidnapped, Q is not a helpless baby though, Q's backstory, emetophobia warning, mentions of drug use, slightly fluffy, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runandgo/pseuds/runandgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly, Q supposes, he loves his job. Except for a few things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Main Detractor

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first ever public fic! any comments are welcome and hugely appreciated :-) i just saw spectre and i've been in 00q hell for days. this takes place sometime between skyfall and spectre, but i did mention the car because i loved how q was a little miffed about it. 
> 
> disclaimer: i do not own james bond, obviously. this fic is entirely un-betaed and un-britpicked, so any errors in grammar, spelling, or research are the fault of an american who knows literally nothing about espionage!

**M** ostly, Q supposes, he loves his job. Granted, it's not exactly logical; he spends most of his days doing things that would get him killed if he stepped foot in any number of foreign countries, and he can't tell anyone what he does. Even if he had a boyfriend, which he doesn't. So he talks to his cats instead, quiet enough that his neighbors can't hear him through his thin walls.

But the main detractor of Q's general enjoyment of MI6 is James Bond. 

First of all, he constantly breaks everything that Q makes for him. Every gun, every watch, every bloody hi-tech pen he can create ends up smashed, stepped on, or at the bottom of the ocean. Three-million-pound cars that weren't even meant for him driven into rivers. Cutting-edge technology destroyed by one fight. 

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear you just break things to have an excuse to come down here every week," Q mutters distractedly while he's disabling a tracking device one day. Bond chuckles, and Q looks up, and his heart nearly stops, because Bond's got that look on. The smirk, with the right side of his mouth, and his icy eyes filled with mirth. 

"Maybe I do," he replies, standing up and putting the new gun (Sig Sauer, because Q's need trying that out lately, homing bullets that took Q months and months) in his inner pocket. "Sweetheart," he adds as he walks out the door. 

Second of all, Q is in love with him. 

It's getting to be a real problem, if he's being frank, because every time Bond walks into his headquarters with that look on his face and asks for a favor, Q's convinced - if only for a split second - that he's going to say, "Have coffee with me." Or something less modest. Or equally ridiculous. 

(James Bond doesn't drink coffee, and Q drinks tea. Earl Grey.) 

He's helpless. For Christ's sake, he's followed the man from Switzerland to Côte D'Ivoire to give him pointlessly small gadgets. Q does have people who report to him; it's not as if he couldn't get one of them to do it. Instead, though, he gets on tiny planes - _planes!_ \- and careens through the Alps and across the Pacific and drives through rural Pennsylvania farmland and takes public transport in foreign countries for the chance of seeing him, and seeing him in action. 

There's no one like Bond when he's got himself going, nothing close. He's fucking ruthless, but he's so careful. Every move is calculated. Q's seen him disembowel someone to get a message that they had swallowed and barely get a speck of blood on his hands. It's probably wrong that he found it almost enchanting. 

And then Bond had picked up his girl of the hour and left, doubtless whisking her away to some hotel to tend to her wounds and have her rub oil on his chest, or some other almost ridiculous sexually-tense act. What do those women do for him, anyway? 

Q may be a hopeless romantic, but he's no fool. Through all the office gossip and all the surveillance, all 4 years of this job, he's never seen Bond save a man. There are no "Bond boys," no alternative to the derisive nickname the rest of MI6 gave to Bond's habit. The only hope that Q's been clinging to for two years is _"What makes you think this is my first time?"_ Which is hardly anything at all. Just the usual peacocking about, trying to intimidate Silva. 

But oh, did it light a fire under Q. 

Moneypenny was the first to notice his crush, and she confronted him with a sly, smug smile. "Q. Have you caught the Bond bug?" 

"Ab-absolutely not," he stammered, flushing to the roots of his hair. Genetics had given him his mother's pale skin and his father's ruddy blush at the slightest embarrassment, and it had not once worked in Q's favor. 

"I know how that goes," she sighed, and wrapped her long fingers around her mug. "Look, James isn't picky. If you flirt with him, he'll flirt back. It's basically Newton's law; if you're attracted to him, he's drawn to you as well." 

"Eve..." Q pushed his glasses up and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't want that. Really, I don't. Of course I want him to be attracted to me, and of course I want - some sort of liaison with him, but I don't want to just be _that."_

"Nothing wrong with just being that," Moneypenny replied, frowning slightly. 

"No, that's not what I meant," he backpedaled. "I don't just want sex. I don't want this to be just another conquest." He winced at the absolutely cliche sound of that sentence. 

Eve's laugh wasn't in response to anything humorous. "Well, Q, you're pretty fucked, then, aren't you?" She gave him a sad little pat on the shoulder and pushed away from his desk, heels clicking powerfully on the tile floor. Q slid into his chair, covered his face with his hands, and let out a quiet groan. 

If he had just been able to let go of this damned puppy crush, he wouldn't be in this situation now. But no - he just had to follow Bond, because he asked him to, and Q was unable to resist him. 

It was a pretty standard mission, nothing too dangerous. Q had been giving him a replacement gun and sneaking stares at his tight suit when he wasn't looking, and Bond held up a finger. "Shh." 

"I beg your pardon?" Q whispered. 

"Shh." Bond dropped to his knees and ran his fingers along the wall, searching for something Q couldn't see. His fingernails found an edge and he pushed gently. A secret panel ground its way into visibility, with a button set in the middle. "Follow me." He pressed the button and the wall receded into a cavernous room on the other side. Q hastily packed up his laptop and hurried after him. 

In fact, Q was so entranced that he neglected to look behind him, which is why he was surprised by the needle jamming into his carotid artery. He barely had a chance to yelp in pain before blackness ate away at the edges of his vision and he passed out. 

Now he's coming to in a plain white room. (These villains are all the same.) Well, the room is white except for the smears of blood Q's neck had left behind on the floor. The lights are bright and they pierce his brain, and he can barely think with his heartbeat pounding in his skull. The pressure is almost unbearable. He tries to suck in a breath and say something, but instead doubles over into a rattling cough. It's hard for him to catch his breath, and he reaches out to try and steady himself. His hands are viciously yanked back, eliciting a yell of pain. The zip ties have dug red lines into his wrists. Q bites his lip hard so the added pain doesn't make him black out again. 

Slowly, slowly, the room comes into focus, and he's able to blink sweat out of his eyes and look around. The room isn't totally white, in fact - there's a black window in the wall opposite him that looks like a mirror. Two ways, probably, his brain supplies. Sighing, Q brings himself to his knees, and then attempts to stand. The white expansion starts bleeding and spinning out of place, and he thuds back down again. He'll have to crawl. Very degrading, but that's rather the point of kidnapping. 

It's not as far as he originally thought to the wall. Once he gets there, he slumps with his back against it and lets a tear trickle down his face, so his captors can't see it. This is not what he had planned. And his head fucking _hurts._ He counts to 10, gathers his resolve, then wipes his face and gets up, more slowly this time. Q stares directly into the glass. "I don't know who you are, or what you want from me. But I want to know. I think you at least owe me that much, after treating me like this." 

"On the contrary, Quartermaster." The voice that fills the chamber is loud, so loud it makes Q wince. "I don't owe you anything. And in fact I think you owe us, for allowing your agent to interfere here." 

"He's not my agent," Q says firmly. _He's not my anything._ "I practically need to put him on a leash to get him to do what I want him to, and he never listens." 

"Let him go." That's Bond's voice, and it sends waves of relief through Q that he's sure must be visible on his face. "He didn't want to get caught up in all of this." 

"Of course he didn't, Mr. Bond. But that's the hazard of working in espionage. If you want him free, then as long as we have him, we have you as well. And we will keep him until you leave this place." A dark chuckle - is it possible for a chuckle to be dark? "And perhaps after. He's quite smart, and rather handsome as well." A shudder runs down Q's spine, and he frowns so they can see it. He's not particularly scared; these men don't seem to be too intelligent, and MI6 has dealt with this particular group before (drug smugglers and possible terrorists). But it's tedious to be captured, and his headache is preventing him from doing anything useful too fast. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to remember how he can escape from this. 

Q has seen Bond break zip ties countless times, and he tries to recall the technique. Brace your forearms against your hipbones, about halfway to your elbow. Draw them away, and then pull them back sharply. The force should snap the plastic. 

_Oh, fucking shit._ It doesn't work. There's a quite a difference between Q, built like a distance runner, and Bond, who's practically a professional boxer, and though Q's been trained in combat, it's been a long time since he's had to implement anything more than casual hand-to-hand. The zip ties have well and truly cut into his wrists now, serrated edges biting like teeth. The blood starts running almost immediately. 

"Hm, that was a poor choice, wasn't it, Mr. Quartermaster?" The voice is pleasant but with an edge. Ice cream laced with cyanide. A previously unnoticeable door in the white wall slides open, and a huge man runs in. Q braces himself, but it's useless. He's smacked in the side of the head with the man's brass knuckles and giant fist so hard and fast that his body doesn't register it until a split second after, when he doubles over and throws up. This is the worst thing he's ever felt. He can't think; his brain must be leaking out from his ears. The only notions he has are pain and a need to make it stop. There's a crash, and Q's eyes tell him that Bond has shot through the two-way mirror and is beating his assailants, but his mind refuses to process this. Mercifully, his body lets him black out, and he thinks he can hear himself whimpering before his vision fades. 

When he wakes up, he's in a bed, almost like a hospital except he knows it's not. His immediate instinct upon waking is to vomit again, pain bursting like stars behind his eyes, but he's able to restrain himself by biting his lip until blood trickles onto his chin and starts to slide its way down his throat. 

"Welcome back, Mr. Quartermaster!" The voice has a face now, a rather short man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a gold tooth. "It's nice to see those beautiful eyes with some life in them! I've been poking and prodding and trying to find out what makes you - and Mr. Bond - tick. Don't worry; you're not concussed, somehow. That's a miracle." He leans in and adjusts something on Q's monitors. "I wouldn't peek under those bandages, if I were you," the man singsongs, seeing Q begin to lift the blankets. At that, Q blanches, and lays back down. 

"Please bring in Mr. Bond," the man with the tooth calls, and the door opens. Bond is forced through with a pistol to his back and a blindfold around his eyes. The blindfold drops, and he takes in the situation for a millisecond, then lunges for the man. But the man calmly places his finger on a red button by Q's bedside, and Q's blood runs cold. Bond stops out of pure instinct and the look on Q's face. 

"No need to worry, it's just morphine," the man smirks. "But that's not 'just' to the Quartermaster, now, is it?" His eyes narrow directly at Q, whose breath catches in his throat. "Why don't you explain to your friend why this isn't in your best interests?" 

_This is my undoing,_ Q thinks helplessly. His job, his entire livelihood, depends on this secret not getting out. And here he is, forced to tell it. Q hates emotional confessions more than anything, so he fights to keep his voice as neutral as possible when he opens his blood-sticky lips. 

"In uni, I was a drugged-out, idiotic genius with nothing better to do than get high and try to hack into MI6. It was the biggest challenge, so naturally I took it on. And one night I succeeded, and they found me and started to come after me, and I overdosed on heroin on purpose for the wild hope that they'd leave me for dead instead of arresting me when they reached my flat. Instead, I woke up three days later with M peering over me. She offered me the quartermaster job and, in return, promised that no one would know about the circumstances in which they found me. She is the only one who was previously aware of this." His efforts are successful, and his voice somehow remains calm throughout the story. There's a constant thrum of fear beating in his chest - yes, there's the thought of losing his job, but even worse is the notion of telling his deepest, darkest secret to Bond. He's not the brilliant kid recruited just out of university, just an addict desperate for his next amusement. 

"So enough morphine would -"

"Quite possibly cause a seizure, yes," the mysterious man responded cheerfully. "Or at the very least, reignite an addiction that's been sleeping for years." 

Bond steps back, thinking carefully, sucking his cheeks in. His eyes flicker over to Q, who turns his head away. He can't bear to look Bond in the eye, and he's afraid of what else this man knows. 

"And in case you thought that I was done with secrets," the gold-toothed man continues, "I've got the real whopper coming up next." He whistles, and a door opens. Out rolls a woman - a beautiful woman, dark hair and dark eyes and sultry lips, gorgeous even with the gag in her mouth - strapped to a tall table. "Your latest plaything, Mr. Bond, I believe." 

He claps his hands. "So now the choice is yours. Leave now, unharmed, and tell MI6 all about this hideout. Or pick one of these lovely selections to save. Two people close to you. Both in love with you-" Q flinches, feeling himself turn red. _Shit._

"I'm sorry, what?" Bond interrupts. This is the first time Q's ever heard him well and truly surprised. "In love with me?" 

A sarcastic laugh from the man. "You couldn't guess? All the special trinkets and the trips to see you, even though he hates flying? The Q may as well stand for 'Queer.'" 

The agent shifts forward, eyes fixed on Q. "Is he right?" he asks, but there's a scheme behind his eyes, and he indicates with the barest movement that Q should nod. 

"Well - yes," Q admits, and hopes Bond doesn't feel the weight of truth behind the playacted words. 

In two powerful strides, Bond is at his bedside, and then his hands are on Q's jaw. Every synapse is firing at once inside the younger man's head; it's like a cacophonous symphony of light. The pain leaves for a few seconds before he feels Bond push something into his hand. When the agent's lips brush his cheek, Q is barely coherent enough to hear the whisper of "that bloody exploding pen, count of three" before Bond presses a rough kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

Then, after this entirely embarrassing and draining ordeal, after surviving being kidnapped and beaten, Q is fairly sure he actually dies. Because this is happening. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it's not real, it's just an act for the case, but he pushes that knowledge down for now and kisses Bond back. The heart monitor goes crazy. 

"One," Bond whispers against Q's lips. "Two," he murmurs to his neck. "Three," he says, pausing and smirking at him, and Q jerks up, presses the pen's button, tosses it and hunkers down. 

The localized explosion is bright and blasts hot air into their faces - and the man in the center of the room ends up much worse than just slightly singed. Q almost vomits for the third time that day, and Bond's paramour does, leaning to the side of her table. The smell of gore and gas and burning flesh is terrible. Bond is across the room unleashing her, and Q thinks about going to join them, but then he remembers that he's plugged into this strange hospital bed. 

Bond's glued to his watch, having plucked it from the burning tuxedo of the gold-toothed man. "I need medical down here right away. I know you can see where we are now... No, it's not for me. It's for Q. He's alive, he's conscious... I know... Yes, I suppose you could say it was my fucking fault..." 

The woman slides off her table and Bond catches her around the waist before setting her down gently on her feet. She gives him a peck on the cheek, then saunters out of the room like no one else. She just leaves Bond. She does the thing that nobody does. Q cannot fathom for one second why she'd do that, or why Bond just lets her. He never lets them leave, either. 

Q sits there in his bed, feeling rather useless. Bond incapacitated the man's assistants almost immediately, and now it's just them. The air, still thick with the overpowering smell of blood, is awkward. 

"007," Q says, breaking the silence. "I - thank you. For, er, saving me. If you want to go get your - lady friend, I can wait for medical attention myself." 

Bond makes a sound that might be described as a tut if he were an old woman and not a terrifying agent. "She's fine, Q. She's CIA." 

"I'm MI6," he retorts, "and she's in love with you." 

Bond laughs his dry laugh. "She's not in love with me. I've met her before. This man is just fond of dramatic displays, and if I acted like I loved her, or at least wanted her, it would be easier to get him in a vulnerable position. I didn't plan on you." The weight of that sentence hangs heavy before he adds, "And I'm sure you'd do fine if you weren't hooked up to an IV that's threatening to kill you." 

_Not quite,_ Q thinks, _just send me into a seizure or a relapse._ Instead, he asks, "Why were the CIA here? This was fairly small-potatoes for international involvement." 

Bond sighs. "This group has been causing trouble in America for quite a while. Apparently they caused an explosion in San Francisco last month, and after some investigation, they found out that they've been responsible for a staggering portion of the drug trade." The sound of his weapons clunking against the tiled floor echoes slightly as he sits next to Q's bed. 

Bracing himself, Q offers, "Listen, 007, about that whole -" 

"Q," Bond interrupts, "we don't have to talk about it right now. I'm bloody worn out, and you are too. Just - it can wait until tomorrow. But I can promise you that you won't lose your job." 

He's right - now that the adrenaline is receding, the pain is throbbing back to Q's head, and it's a fight to keep his eyes open. By the time med shows up, they're both passed out, Bond's head resting on the side of Q's bed, the quartermaster's hand dangling down next to him. 

~~ 

For the next two weeks, Q is shuffled in and out of the hospital. He's poked and prodded every which way, tested up and down until they're sure he's not poisoned or worse. The bandage on his lower body turned out to cover a long, nasty series of cuts that were completely meaningless. After some pressure, Bond admits that they made him watch while they did it. They heal fine, but Q's left with ropy pink scars crisscrossing his abdomen that will fade very slowly. 

When he returns to Q branch, all the workers give him a standing ovation, and he stops in his tracks, mouth hanging open. After a nudge from Moneypenny, he manages to get out, "Er, yes - thank you, carry on," and scuttles away to his lab as soon as possible. His day is a whirlwind of checking new tech and fixing bugs, because he's apparently the only person capable of handling _basic code_ in the whole damn branch. Working on the security for five hours straight was not what he had in mind, so when a knock on the door comes, it makes him want to scream. "Who is it?" he snaps. 

"It's me, Q, let me in," comes the muffled reply in Bond's low voice. 

Q sits up straighter, adjusts his glasses, and fixes his hair. "Come in," he says a little more meekly. Bond enters with one hand behind his back in a new, stunning gunmetal suit. It has a golden sheen where it catches the light. Q is utterly spellbound by it. "What can I do for you, 007?" he asks, attempting a casual tone. 

"You can have dinner with me, Quentin," Bond replies with that look that Q absolutely loves, bringing his arm forward to reveal a bouquet of roses. Red roses. _Really._

The only thing Q can say, dumbly, is "That's not my name." He's staring at the flowers as if they'll crumble to dust in seconds. This has to be a dream. Every other time Bond walks in, the picture of debonair, and asks Q for a date with all the bravado in the world, it's a dream. He'll wake up in his flat in a few seconds with a cat purring on his chest and meowing for food. 

"Really? Is it Quincy? Or Quinn?" The smirk doesn't leave Bond's face. 

"It doesn't even start with a Q," he grumbles. "Just because Mallory got lucky doesn't mean that the rest of our jobs depend on the alliteration of our name and our position." He's stalling for time, stunned and disbelieving of his good fortune. 

"That's not why I'm here, Q," Bond concedes, and levels his gaze at him. "Come to dinner with m-" 

"All right," Q blurts, then breaks into a grin. 

"You haven't heard where we're going yet." 

"I don't need to," he says, and watches as Bond's smile spreads as big as he's ever seen it. It's true. He'd go to the chip shop down the block in his Sunday best with Bond. He trusts him, as stupid a decision as that is. It's been weeks and no one has said anything to Q that hinted they might know his secret. 

And then they finally kiss, with Bond's hands on the small of Q's back, almost covering it totally. When Q had thought he died before, in the hospital bed, he had no idea what an actual kiss was going to feel like. There is certainly a reason why James Bond is able to have anyone he chooses. They break apart, and Q is flushed all the way down to his chest, still smiling ridiculously. "I seldom give people flowers and I seldom ask them twice for dinner, so is this different enough from my 'usual' for you?" Bond asks quietly in Q's ear, amused. 

_"Moneypenny,"_ Q realizes, and narrows his eyes. "I swore her to secrecy!" 

"It's not as if the feeling wasn't mutual," the agent points out. "Why do you think I kept asking that you, specifically, be sent out to give me things? It's not because I enjoy your witty comments. Although I do." His grin takes on a wicked quality. "Though I think I'd enjoy making you shut up even more." 

"I didn't think you had any interest in men," Q says almost as if he's protesting. 

Bond shrugs. "Never met any in the field who I wanted to be involved with. But I'm not particular about the gender of my consorts." He gives Q another long kiss before pulling away. "Shall I pick you up at 8?" 

After another silence, Q nods firmly. "Right. Dinner. Tonight. Yes." He goes to sit back down, but trips over his own feet in his haste. Bond snickers, then turns on his heel and leaves. The quartermaster watches him go with a rather dopey look in his eyes. Once the agent is gone, he turns back to the code with renewed vigor. 

Q _definitely_ loves his job.


End file.
